At NAMM 2025, PRS Guitars celebrated its 40th anniversary with a bumper live show that brought a score of its biggest players together, and Mark Lettieri was the impromptu glue that held it all together.
Paul Reed Smith founded the Maryland company in 1985 after unsuccessfully trying to sell his designs to Kramer and Yamaha. Despite Al Di Meola helping with his sales pitches, they all said no, and he decided to go solo.
Since then, John Mayer, Carlos Santana, Mark Tremonti, and Herman Li – amongst a dizzying slew of other virtuosos – have joined its ranks. But when it came to celebrating its ruby anniversary, there were a few teething issues that the Snarky Puppy maestro, Lettieri, was more than willing to solve.
“I got invited to perform with my band, the Mark Lettieri Group, but then we realized that John Mayer needed a rhythm section,” he recalls in a video with PRS. “And so I said, ‘Well, I know John, I'll volunteer my band.’ And so he said, ‘Great. That'll be a lot of fun.’”
Then the floodgates opened, with Lettieri soon realizing that two other esteemed guitarists, Randy Bowland and Philip Sayce, also needed a band for the show. Lettieri volunteered again. And again. But it wasn’t the first time he’d jammed with Mayer, the man behind one of PRS’s best-selling guitars, the Silver Sky.
“My good friend Bob Reynolds [saxophonist] and I were doing a gig at the Blue Whale in Los Angeles,” he explains. “Bob used to be a member of John's touring band. And back then, this was probably 2018 or so, he said, ‘I wonder if John would want to come and sit in.’
“Well, it turns out he was in town and wanted to come play,” he adds. “So, he rolled up with his guitar on his back, his Fender Deluxe in his right hand, plugged in, and we jammed out for the rest of the set. It was great: totally unexpected, but obviously totally musically fulfilling.”
The pair kept in touch, casually talking gear over Instagram, especially when Lettieri switched to playing PRS. So it’s no wonder he was so forthcoming when Mayer needed a band.
“I was kind of excited at the end. We got to do a dual guitar conversation,” the guitarist expands. “We didn't rehearse it, but we kind of fell into it in rehearsal, and we're like, ‘This is cool.’ We probably could have played for quite a bit longer, but there was a schedule.
“So, I went with more of a middle [pickup position] with the neck and the bridge, and John was position two. So, it was a nice little tonal contrast. We’ll have to do it again.”
In related news, Mayer recently reflected on “one of the strangest, most beautiful, serendipitous moments” of his career when he got to record with one of Prince's guitars (and we think we know which one). He also revealed his insecurities about becoming the foil to his guitar hero, the late Bob Weir, in Dead & Company.
